


A Stitch In Time

by sternel



Category: Little Women Series - Louisa May Alcott
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-19
Updated: 2006-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:34:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1639154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternel/pseuds/sternel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein we see one evening among the four years in which our Little Women grow into Good Wives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Stitch In Time

**Author's Note:**

> "The Lady of Shalott" is a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson; "The Pilgrim's Progress" is by John Bunyan. Both works are available on Project Gutenberg.  
> Many thanks to Eman, for invaluable beta work and fixing my errant commas, and Jen, who has the trunk next to mine in the garrett.
> 
> Written for Prayer Reverie

 

 

On a cold winter's day, Orchard House was full of light and warmth as the March daughters gathered around the fire. Even though Father had returned safely home, the battles raged on, and Marmee devoted herself to sending endless packages for the soldiers - many of them directed to their friend Mr. Brooke, who wrote long letters in return. These were often addressed to Meg instead of her mother, asking her to express his thanks for their kindness. Meg kept these letters close, and never spoke of them, but Jo watched her quietly, often hearing the telltale crinkle of papers tucked into her bodice.

With so many soldiers, and so many poor folk needing succor in the harsh cold of the winter, the girls lately had found their industry best devoted to the manufacture of socks. And so they sit today, as we peer into their bright room, knitting as fast as their little fingers can move.

"Tell us a story, Jo, while we're working," Amy begs, picking dispiritedly at a tangle in her yarn.

"Just like that?" Jo asks, laughing. "Off the top of my head?"

"Yes!"

"Oh, do, Jo," Beth chims in. "You're so much better at storytelling than any of us."

"Come on, Jo," Laurie urges from his corner. He had agreed to help Meg, and was sitting patiently, arms full of yarn that Meg was winding slowly into balls. "Help a poor fellow out here, this is pretty dull work for both Meg and myself."

"Meg and me," Meg corrects him gently. "For someone in college, you sometimes invent the most ridiculous grammar, Laurie."

"Well, I'm not at college right now, am I?" he replies gaily. "I'm on holiday, and so is my grammar. Come on, Jo, be a pal."

Giving up as a stitch drops off her needle and ladders down through the sock, Jo puts her needles down on her lap. "All right, all right. What kind of story?"

"Pirates!"

"A love story."

"Something to laugh at," Beth requests thoughtfully.

"Pirates!" Laurie repeats. "Or soldiers!"

"I want a love story," Amy echoes. "With a princess."

"Amy did ask first," Jo replies, starting to rip out her mistake carelessly. "A love story with a princess - and pirates? And it should be funny? You all have a very high opinion of my cleverness."

"And well deserved," Laurie says staunchly, earning him a stuck-out tongue from Jo, which earns a scolding from proper Meg in its turn.

"I just reread a favorite the other day," Jo says, taking up her needles once again. "I think I could remember it well enough to recite, shall I try?"

Laurie's eyes glimmer. "I think I know - shall I get the book and test you?"

"Sit you still," Meg admonishes. "If you drop this yarn it will become hopelessly tangled, and I won't waste it that way." She holds up the ball in her hands, almost completed.

"It's a lovely color, Meg," Beth tells her. "Like the color of the sky at night." Meg flushes with pride, but doesn't speak, continuing to wind.

"Let Jo tell the story!" Amy whines.

Putting down her needles once again, Jo takes a deep breath, and begins to recite:

"On either side the river lie  
Long fields of barley and of rye,  
That clothe the world and meet the sky;  
And through the field the road run by  
To many-tower'd Camelot;  
And up and down the people go,  
Gazing where the lilies blow  
Round an island there below,  
The island of Shalott."

They all fall silent as she recites Tennyson's immortal tale of the fair maiden in her tower and the handsome Lancelot who tempts her into her fateful sail, needles moving slower as the story weaves its spell.

"That is so dreadfully romantic," swoons Amy into the silence after Jo declaims the final lines. "To die for true love!"

"It would have been more romantic if he'd stayed with her," Beth says, returning her attention to her sock. "Then they could have lived happily ever after, together."

"But he didn't even know she was there," Meg points out.

"That's what makes it romantic!" Amy insists, as Laurie chuckles.

"Would you throw everything away for a stranger?" he asks her. "I should hope not, your sisters would come after you in an instant, and drag you home."

"If he were a rich stranger, they shouldn't mind," she says, pertly.

"But if he were a poor stranger?" Laurie asks, lifting his arms as Meg winds the last of the yarn. "Ah! Freedom! Jo, I think that was a capital recitation. You should tread the boards and make your way as a lady of the theatre!"

Jo reaches over to tap his arm with her needle. "Then I'd be no better than the Lady of Shalott, floating away on a river of plays."

"If it's not for true love, then it's not worth it," Amy pipes up, knowingly.

Laurie stretches his arms. "What if you don't meet your true love, Amy?" he asks.

"Everyone meets their true love," she informs him. "You can't escape your fate; you have to go where it takes you, even if it's away." Laurie looks at her, a contemplative expression upon his young face before his gaze turns to Jo, who quickly ducks her head to focus on her knitting needles.

"I don't think anyone should want to leave home at all," Beth counters in her familiar refrain as she neatly turns the heel of her sock. "It's so pleasant here, like this. We are all warm and cozy and Hannah's dinner smells so divine -- why would anyone want to leave something like this?"

"For adventure!" Jo says grandly, waving her arm, which sends a needle flying. Laurie scrambles to retrieve it for her and upsets Meg's basket, which sends balls of yarn rolling everywhere. Puss, with a feline grin, leaps down from her perch next to Amy and starts batting them about.

"Oh, no, Laurie!" the poor girl cries. "Help me gather them up before she frays them all, Jo, help me -"

There are a few moments of scramble before everything is righted, and Laurie flops onto the floor, between the yarn and fireplace, on guard against future attacks, while Beth sternly sits Puss next to her on the sofa before leaning over to help Amy with a stitch lost in all the fuss.

"So, what about you, Jo?" Laurie asks, leaning over to look at her, and Jo hurriedly looks down at her sock.

"What about me what?"

"Do you think you'll meet your true love?" he asks, looking at her. Next to him, in her chair, Meg's gaze sharpens with interest, and there's a crinkle as she shifts in her chair.

"I certainly wouldn't run away from a comfortable tower where I could do lots of writing, that's what I think," she replies staunchly.

Laurie sits up, taking up a ball of yarn and tossing it from hand to hand. "That's hardly a fair answer, especially when everyone else has given their opinion."

Jo casts a helpless look to Meg, but Meg's face is carefully bland as she begins to cast on for a pair of mittens. "Meg hasn't given an opinion."

"I think it's a lovely story," Meg says smoothly. "But since I know there will be no Knights of Camelot venturing through Concord any time soon, I think I can safely expect it to remain a story."

"'She hath no loyal Knight and true, The Lady of Shalott,'" quoth Laurie. "What about a Union soldier?"

Meg crinkles again, a hand resting on her bodice. "There are precious few of them in Concord as well - they are all on the lines fighting, as you well know."

Laurie grows silent for a long moment. "That is true." He tosses the yarn back and forth a bit more, and they all fall silent.

"I think it was a lovely story, Jo," Amy says finally, Beth having set her knitting to rights for her. Her concentration is focused upon it and she doesn't realize her tongue is sticking out in a most unbecoming manner. "I'd love to be like the Lady of Shallot someday."

"I wouldn't," Beth tells her, returning to her own sock. "Although I should enjoy being able to weave all day like she does. Think of all the things I could make."

Jo smiles, thinking Beth would perhaps make the best Lady of Shalott out of all of them - the only one of the sisters who could possibly outlast the mirror's curse. "I suppose one can't really escape one's fate," she muses.

"Aha!" Laurie tosses a ball of yarn at her. "Caught!"

"I didn't say I'd run off to pursue the stage," Jo protests, not liking the look in his eyes.

"But you are caught all the same," Laurie says. "Or you will be."

"You're a horrid boy, Laurie, teasing us so," Meg interjects. "Must you?"

Laurie subsides, retrieving the ball of yarn. "I'll behave. Shall I read while everyone works? I have some books here -"

"I'd like to hear the Pilgrim's Progress," Jo says quietly, not looking up from her knitting, which has grown somewhat wild, stitches of all sizes flying from her needles. Sighing, she stops to pick out a knot, pretending Laurie is not staring at her.

Laurie frowns, watching her for a moment longer, but he obligingly takes up the requested book and starts to read, his eyes straying back to Jo time and time again.

"When at the first I took my pen in hand

Thus for to write, I did not understand..."

His voice, unlike his gaze, is still and calm, and all of the girls knit quietly, their mistakes becoming fewer as the good words, ringing quietly in Laurie's deep baritone, fill the room. Through the window, a gentle snow can be seen, adding a blanket of peace over the world and the warm room as we leave the girls and their dear friend to their industry, awaiting, without knowing, all that is to come.

 

 

 


End file.
